Backup server at primary site and DR site + replication

[olevidar]

Current installation : 3 ESX enterprise hosts at primary site with SAN

Thinking about :

- Innstall new physical server at primary with MS 2008 and veeam backup storing VBK files
- Innstall new ESX host at DR site doing replication for failover and storing VBK files (as DR for the backup server on primary site)

What if I also want to move/store a copy of the backupfiles from primary site on the host on DR site, how is this done ? So if the backup server on primary site is failing (or we have a disaster) and we loose all data, we will be able to transfer backup files from DR site back to primary site again ? As far as I see we may have to do a file transfer of the VBK files only from primary to DR site (takes loooong time with 3TB of data) ? or is it possible to backup to primary and DR site in one operation so there will be only incrementals which will be transfered over WAN ? or should we just do double backup jobs, as one on the primary site and one of the replicated data on DR site ? For failover we have the replication off course.
What about licensing ? Only necessary with licenses for primary hosts ?

I am a reseller and not a technician so I just need to understand how this could be done to advise customer.

thanks !

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Ole-Vidar,

Provided that you have a possibility to establish direct FC or iSCSI connection from a physical machine to the SAN which hosts the production VMs, I would recommend installing Veeam backup server on that very machine, so you could configure all the jobs to run in SAN mode and use local storage as destination for the backups. If you don't have this connection, you may install Veeam backup server in a VM and use Virtual Appliance job mode to get best performance possible.

Yes, I would also stick to doing backups onsite for DR and performing replication jobs for HA offsite, that would help to minimize a downtime for the production in case of a disaster.

As to answering your question about using primary and DR site as a backup/replication target in one job, then you need to configure separate jobs for that. If you want to store backup files both onsite and offsite, you may want to use rsync, here is a useful topic with detailed information:
http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... ite#p17716

As soon as you main site is up&running you may use replication jobs to transfer all the VMs back.

Our licensing model is based on lisensing source hosts only (primary), so there is no need to bother about your target DR host.

Hope it helps!